Part 8 – The Shift from an Industrial to a Planetary Civilization:
Israel and Palestine – Sit transit gloria mundi

In October, 2009, President Barack Obama tried to slap Israel’s hand over its increase of West Bank settlements; last week Israel slapped Obama’s face by tearing down Palestinian houses and building 900 new Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem.

Fatah President Abbas has recognized the decline in power of his patron and has given up. The sad truth now is that the Sharon and Netanyahu policy of making certain that there can never be a two state solution by feinting negotiations to buy time in which to take as much land and water as possible has worked. The lamentable condition of Gaza and the shreds of the West Bank are not enough to make a Swiss canton much less a nation-state. The Oslo agreement is road kill, and the road map ends against a wall. After a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv, one young girl screamed for the TV cameras: “We should kill them all!” As the Irish mystic A.E. said: “We become what we hate.”

Israeli women can vote and become professionals. Many Palestinian women are locked up like American chickens in Arkansas and are given no life but breeding, so they have, on average five children each. Many of these children have no education but memorizing the Koran and dreaming of entering paradise, not by earning a living, but by strapping a bomb to themselves and earning a death through martyrdom. Were the Palestinians to be allowed to live in Palestine, the Israelis know that the Palestinians would overtake them in population in less than two generations’ time. So a two state solution is completely unacceptable to a plurality of Israelis. And a one state solution of a single secular republic of Israel and Palestine in which the two peoples have equal rights could never work, because the Israelis would never trust Palestinians into their military, give them jobs at Dimona, or share with them the operational control of their hundreds of atom bombs.

As humans “ya gotta believe” problems have solutions. But there is no solution to a religious problem when religion itself is the problem. The current policies of Israelis and Palestinians lead only to terrorism, war, and eventual mutual annihilation.

But I’m human, so I gotta believe there is a solution–some way out. Thinking otherwise, I reject the policies of the wonks and experts that have failed for sixty years and still insist that the UN should declare Old Jerusalem a World City to be policed by Blue Helmets, and that Egypt and Jordan should be coerced by the US and the UN into granting citizenship to the Palestinians: Egyptian citizenship for Gaza, Jordanian citizenship for the tattered remnant of the West Bank. The two nation-states should sponsor the two areas as internal autonomous provinces, precisely in the same manner that the Dalai Lama has suggested that China sponsor an internal autonomous province for Tibet.

Yes, I know, neither Egypt nor Jordan wants anything to do with Palestine, anymore than the U.S wants to make Ciudad Juarez part of the state of New Mexico to solve the problem of the drug wars; however, if Egypt and Jordan continue along their habitual cultural lines, they will have nuclear explosions on their borders, if not from Iran, then from Al Qaeda or its Islamist successors. When there is no road or road map on the ground, one has to soar up into another dimension. Take a look at the map and re-orient yourself from on high and not from below.

William Irwin Thompson

William Irwin Thompson (born July, 1938) is known primarily as a social philosopher and cultural critic, but he has also been writing and publishing poetry throughout his career and received the Oslo International Poetry Festival Award in 1986. He has made significant contributions to cultural history, social criticism, the philosophy of science, and the study of myth. He describes his writing and speaking style as “mind-jazz on ancient texts”. He is an astute reader of science, social science, history, and literature. He is the founder of the Lindisfarne Association.

His book, Still Travels: Three Long Poems was published in 2009 by Wild River Books. Order a copy from Amazon.